A citizen’s advisory committee, formed to avoid perceived conflicts of interest from court members raising their own salaries, recommended the four commissioners receive a 4 percent pay increase and 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment.

County Judge Nelson Wolff, the fifth member of the court, would receive the cost-of-living adjustment under the committee’s recommendation, but not the 4 percent salary increase.

The raises become official when the court approves its fiscal year 2019 budget in September and would take effect Oct. 1.

For now, Nelson Wolff makes $166,830 a year, and the four commissioners — Sergio “Chico” Rodriguez, Paul Elizondo, Kevin Wolff and Tommy Calvert — each take in annual salaries of $122,567. All five receive a $9,000 auto allowance.

Once the 2019 budget is approved, Nelson Wolff and the commissioners will earn $171,835 and $131,294, respectively, before their car allowances.

San Antonio City Council members receive annual salaries of $45,722; Mayor Ron Nirenberg makes $61,725 a year.

A comparison with other counties’ commissioners court salaries last year found Bexar commissioners earned at least $27,000 less than their Harris, Dallas and Tarrant counterparts.

Bexar County Commissioners Court stopped awarding cost-of-living pay raises to elected officials in the mid-1980s, which caused salaries to fall behind those of other similarly sized Texas counties.

Kevin Wolff on Tuesday voted against approving the committee’s recommendation, while none of the other court members opposed the move. Elizondo was absent due to illness.

“I vote against it every time it comes up,” said Wolff, the only Republican on the court. “I just don’t think people should be running for office because of the pay. Doesn’t mean I don’t think some offices should be paid, I just don’t want it to get out of hand. I think $100,000-plus a year for a commissioner is plenty in our county.”

The advisory committee, formed in 1997, makes recommendations every other year to cover the two upcoming fiscal years. Jody Newman, owner of The Friendly Spot Ice House, chaired the five-person committee that met in 2017.

Staff from the county’s human resources department helped the committee by handling members’ data and information requests and otherwise offering “administrative support,” according to a county document. The committee in 2017 considered the officials’ then-current salaries and compared them to those of other “similarly structured urban Texas counties,” the document reads.

Committee members also considered elected officials’ responsibilities within the county.

The Bexar court sets the budget for a county of nearly 2 million residents — for which the median household income is $52,353, census data show — while overseeing numerous offices and departments within county government. In the 2018 fiscal year, commissioners raised the minimum wage for county employees from $13.75 to $14.25.

The advisory committee also recommended raises between 3 percent and 7.1 percent, which the court approved, for the district attorney, sheriff, tax assessor-collector, probate court judges, justices of the peace, precinct constables and the district and county clerks.

The total cost of the committee’s recommended raises amounts to $171,007.

The committee has typically recommended salary increases for county elected officials, though commissioners have not always approved the suggested raises. In 2004, all five members of the court rejected the committee’s recommendation to bump up their salaries, though a majority voted to increase the pay of other elected officials.

State Rep. Lyle Larson, a former commissioner, never accepted his annual raises when he served on the court, instead taking the $49,368 salary from his first year in 1997.

“My premise, since I’ve been on the court, is that when you run for office, you know what the compensation is,” Larson said in 2006. That year, the committee recommended a 9.7 percent raise for commissioners, and they instead voted to give themselves a 6.1 percent increase.

Most officials have five days to file a grievance letter with Nelson Wolff’s office if they are unhappy with the committee’s recommendation. Nelson Wolff chairs a “salary grievance committee” that reviews the letters, then presents its recommendations to the court if enough committee members vote to recommend a salary increase.

Military transition center

In other business, commissioners authorized staff to seek a firm that will develop a business model for the county’s military transition center.

The move marks the next step in an effort led by Kevin Wolff to set up a program where caseworkers will begin working with outgoing members up to six months before discharge on finding employment and housing, and dealing with health needs.

The request for proposal will seek a company that can help the county plan the creation of databases that will contain information on local employers, local veterans organizations and the veterans themselves. The firm will also guide the county in how the center might operate “on a day-to-day basis,” Kevin Wolff said.

The North San Antonio Chamber of Commerce plans to work with the transition center staff to link military members with employers.

The county has scheduled a Sept. 24 grand opening for the center, which will cost roughly $1 million a year to operate, Kevin Wolff said.

More juvenile detention officers

Commissioners also authorized $1.17 million in county funds to cover the salary and benefits of 27 new juvenile detention officers and five residential treatment officers, a move aimed at bringing two juvenile centers in compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

A provision of the 2003 federal law, which seeks to prevent sexual assault of prisoners, requires juvenile facilities maintain a 1-to-8 staff-to-inmate ratio during “waking hours,” and a 1-to-16 ratio during “sleeping hours.”

Bexar County’s juvenile probation department asked commissioners to cover more staffing in its 2017-18 budget at the county’s Juvenile Detention and Cyndi Taylor Krier Centers. The county is meeting the PREA ratio but using overtime and “a staffing pool” to do so, according to a presentation at Tuesday’s court meeting.

In response, the court budgeted $1.2 million for new officer positions but set aside the funding until staff completed a study to determine how many new posts the centers need and the staffing requirements needed during each shift to meet the PREA ratio.

The county could be penalized in a sexual abuse or harassment civil lawsuit if its centers don’t comply with PREA’s requirements.

Jasper covers City Hall, local politics and breaking news for the Houston Chronicle through the Hearst Journalism Fellowship program. He previously covered Bexar County and local politics for the San Antonio Express-News. Jasper graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 with degrees in journalism and political science. He has interned for the Tampa Bay Times, Washington Post and Fortune magazine.